Realism
by Julia Claire
Summary: They only have one night - where reality is blurred and all they have is pain and tragedy, empty holes and lonely places, no answers - and each other.  HP NextGen / Narnia: TeddySusan


**Disclaimer: Anything you recognize - from either the Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia fandom - isn't mine.**

**A/N: Written for the Harry Potter Fanfiction Idol Competition on HPFC.**

**Also, a minor note there this piece does contain some discussion about religion - this is probably an unnecesary warning, because I don't think that any of it is offensive, and neither of the characters are actually practicing members of any religious faith. _Any views expressed are solely the characters' are not necesarily my own._ It was simply a very natural topic that would, I think, come up, considering the situation these two characters are in.**

"O_f course it is happening all inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"_

_-Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_

Realism

They were dead.

Susan couldn't forget that, not in this house, with their very smell still permeating the air, their very ghosts – she swore – treading the stairs, behind her above her, all around her. Yet always, somehow, they were unreachable, just skirting out of her grasp, across the veil that straddled her world from all the others.

She gave a small hiccup of a sob, and marveled for what seemed like the millionth time how she could have ever been so stupid. Because there _were_ other worlds, worlds she had been separating herself from for far too long, worlds she had tried to convince herself again and again were nothing more than pretty pictures, imaginations from her childhood.

Once more, she wished she'd listened to them, hadn't been such a boneheaded idiot, for if she had, she would've been with them that day, her body falling with theirs. She wouldn't be alive right now, the sole survivor, to plan the funerals and write the eulogies, to cry and to remember, how she'd given them up for make-up and parties, friends and boys, for being an _adult_.

Susan didn't want make-up now – the bit of it she'd had painted all over her face had already washed away days ago with tears – and she had never in her life felt so uninterested in a party. Her friends too were useless. A few had called, awkwardly, to express their condolences, but the truth was, they weren't the kind of people who knew what to do with grief. They were – however old and mature they contrived themselves to be – still children, innocents.

What she wouldn't give to be a child now.

"Lucy," she cried out, "Peter, Edmund… Mum, Dad…."

She fell silent, even stopping her sobs, listening hard for anything, any small sign that they hadn't completely abandoned her (that she hadn't abandoned them).

She waited for a long time, before her lips parted again, speaking a name she'd scarcely thought of for years...

"Aslan."

She hardly moved, hardly breathed, struck with a sudden hope, waiting, waiting….

But there was no sign of him in this world, either.

And suddenly, Susan was mad, angry, full of more rage than she'd ever been in her life. She ran around her room, and smashing all her things, her box of lipstick, and bottles of perfume, ripping up all her clothes, all the while screaming his name, "Aslan, Aslan, Aslan."

"Why have you done this to me?" she shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice cracking horribly, the wreckage of her rampage strewn all around the room, as she cried, having never felt so alone, so abandoned, in her life, for her anger had not brought him to her any more than her grief.

How she wished she still had her old horn. She could still remember the feel the cool mouthpiece, pressed against her lips, could even now imagine herself blowing it with more desperation than ever before.

Susan let herself fall onto her bed – except that, suddenly, there was no bed there at all, but empty space, and so instead of hitting covers that would have brought no comfort, there was only darkness.

* * *

><p>Teddy always took the taxi cab home from work on Fridays, even though it was more expensive, took longer, and meant he always had to remember to exchange his galleons, sickles, and knuts for Muggle money. But he liked the long, meandering ride through London's streets, even when they were crowded and loud, full of honking cars and stressed passengers. It gave him time to relax, to think, and it made him feel strangely connected with his grandfather, the man he'd never met, who had grown up on the very streets he now looked upon.<p>

Not that he ever really told that to anyone. Strangers who only knew his backstory looked at him pityingly enough already, after all. He didn't want anyone to think he was some sort of case study who had had to be brought to psychologist after psychologist, and still wasn't done getting over his "issues". Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, but it just wasn't _him_. Teddy had never been one to dwell on things. He had had a fairly normal childhood, all considering, and even though it was hard not having a mum to tuck him in at night, to read him bedtime stories, a dad to imitate, to play catch with, he hadn't exactly been deprived. He'd had his grandmother, his godfather, and all the Weasley-Potter gang – James, Al, Lily, Victoire….

He sighed loudly, shifting slightly on the cool leather seat and telling himself, for what felt like nearly the hundredth time, not to think about his ex-girlfriend, the only person who was not a cab driver or a stranger who had shared this ride with him, once… It seemed like ages before…

He still remembered the way she'd kissed him, that day, the summer before her seventh year, when she was still pure and real and Victoire, not yet so focused on perfection and achievement and being at the top, when he was nothing more than dead weight. Not nearly ambitious enough, she'd said…

Teddy stared out at the huge knots of people filling up the streets, and – surely because he'd just been thinking of her – he thought he saw Victoire, appearing among the masses so quickly it seemed she'd Apparated. For a moment, he shook himself, certain he was imagining things, for Victoire – and indeed, any witch – would hardly do something so stupid as Apparate among a crowd of Muggles. Yet even when he took a second glance, the woman standing there did bear a remarkable resemblance to his ex, to him, at least. He wasn't sure many people would have agreed. The colouring was all wrong – she had dark, black hair. But it fell down her back, perfectly straight, in the way that Victoire's did, and she was tall, standing up poker-straight, as though she was used to being noticed and proud of it, beautiful…

But as the cab drew closer – he was suddenly very glad of the awful, painfully slow traffic – he saw that even if she'd had lighter hair, this would not be the version of Victoire he'd seen today at the Ministry. This was a beaten, trampled model, her chin dipped, as though she had recently begun not to care about standing out, her hair, knotted in places, messy, her eyes – brown, not blue – filled with tears.

So of course it wasn't Victoire at all – but he'd never know whether it was because of her resemblance to the woman he still loved or the grief etched in every line of her face that made him tell the cab driver to stop so that he could go out and help her.

He pushed his way through the crowds, feeling a strange panic that he'd never felt before, his eyes fixed upon her as she stood there, sobbing, with people simply passing by. No one seem the least bit bothered, as they surely would had she appeared as suddenly as he thought she had... But then, Muggles, he supposed, as old Mr. Weasley often said, wouldn't know magic if it bit them on the nose.

At last, he came to her, reaching out and putting a hand on her arm, and only then, wondering what in the hell he was going to say.

"Are you…" he began, and then stopped, his heart pounding, his mouth gaping. But then the taxi he had only just vacated pulled level with them now, and so hailing the driver again, he opened the door and beckoned her into it. "Come on… come on..." He ushered her in, put an arm around her shoulders, and asked, "Where do you want to go?"

She looked at him, her eyes full of pain, and whispered, something that sounded like gibberish and yet familiar too...

"Narnia," she said, and his arm still around her, taking her tone as an answer rather than the word he did not understand, he repeated to the driver the address that would take them to his home.

* * *

><p>The fall had only last seconds, but it had been time enough for her heart to leap in her chest, to hope. Yet when her eyes could see again, they were dashed, for she was still in London, noisy, crowded, <em>empty<em> London, with all its familiar buildings. It was, however, a different London, a stranger London. The cars, somehow, looked sleeker, and there were bright signs, flashing lights, strange clothes... But it hardly mattered, except that this was no Heaven, no Narnia. She would not find her family here, if indeed it was so that they were anywhere.

She broke into fresh sobs, hardly bothering to ask for any help or even look at any of the faces around her. No one seemed any more bothered by her crying than by her sudden arrival, and if she hadn't been so otherwise occupied, she would have been offended by it. But this did not matter either – whether she was here or there or anywhere, with strangers or alone…

It wasn't until he touched her arm, giving her a sort of electric shock, that she noticed him. She glanced at his floppy hair – was that a hint of turquoise in it? – and kind brown eyes, startled, momentarily, from the tragedy her life was now centered around, before casting her eyes downward again. He reached out an arm for her, beckoning her towards one of the cars, a taxi, urging her to come with him.

Her surprise fading, she felt wary, all the warnings from her childhood, the awful fairy stories all with the same moral – "Watch out for strangers!" parading through her head. It was almost like a prophecy, a glimpse into the future, warning her not to go with him, or _terrible things would happen._

It would be stupid to get into the cab with him – who knew where he would take her? – in this familiar city full of strangers… It would be stupid, stupid. On some level, she knew that - she was Susan, perfect, prompt, always upstanding Susan, and she never did anything her parents would disapprove of...

But then, did that Susan - the Susan who had forsaken Susan the Gentle to grow up, the Susan who had given up Narnia to wear fancy dresses, the Susan who had never taken a risk, who never believed in anything unless it was proven - did she even exist anymore?

(Did she want her to?)

It was that thought that made her follow him. That thought, and the fact that there was something in her brown eyes that she trusted, that made her instinctly follow him, even when her brain, when every rule she'd ever followed screamed no, no, no.

She let him put his arm around her, too far gone to wonder at the impropriety, on the long taxi cab ride, crying the whole time. At last, just as she had collected herself, they pulled up in front of a tall, brick building. He led her up three flights of stairs and into a messy apartment.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked, moving towards the kitchen, the sink stacked with dirty dishes. "Tea?"

She shrugged, and then nodded, suddenly craving the feel of warmth on her throat.

He turned, as if to make it, and then stopped, looking embarrassed. "Never mind. I don't have any. Would you like…" He seemed at a loss. "… water?"

"It's okay," she said, her voice crackly, scared, uncertain, but more than anything, sad, in this stranger's house. The irony of her words striking her, she started to cry anew.

She looked around, at the open door to the left, catching a glimpse of an unmade bed. "Can I sleep?" she blurted, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

He nodded, and so she went to the bed, pulling the white sheets over her as she fell to sleep at last, wondering vaguely once more if she would wake up tied in a closet, not even having bothered to lock the door behind her.

She awoke with a start, after what seemed like only seconds but was probably more like hours, from a nightmare, some odd, terrifying fantasy. When she opened her eyes, she experienced a single fraction of a moment in relief before remembering that her reality was severely worse.

Choking on the cool night air and brushing what were probably cookie crumbs off the sheets, she cried out, a broken, awful yowl that probably made her sound like a banshee.

She had forgotten he was there, forgotten that there was anyone in this world – wherever it was she was, wherever it was she had been – who still cared, until there was a knock on the door, and his voice, hesitating, polite, called, "Can I come in?"

"Yes," she said back, trying hard to keep the desperation from slipping into her tone, from keeping the tears off her cheeks.

And then, there he was, the pupils of his eyes something like half-moons in the darkness, until he switched on the light. "Is it… what's wrong?"

She looked at him, straight in the eyes, feeling hollow, empty, like a glass doll that no one ever played with. "They're dead."

She knew it was a senseless, useless explanation for why she was like this, for what happened to her, but it struck her, too, as the only perfect truth she could utter.

His eyes crinkled, as if in pain, but he only said, "Who?"

"Everyone," she said softly, and again, it was horribly vague, but terribly true. "My whole family."

He seized up, then, his face seeming to freeze with her words, and then she waited, her tears stopping suddenly, as she braced herself. It hardly mattered to her, anymore, what anyone thought. However, she couldn't help but hate, not just the horror of the statement, not just the tragedy and the aloneness of it, but all the uncomfortable feeling it gave the room, the conversation, in which she uttered it. No one ever knew what to say, how to relate, how to help, in such a case as hers.

And didn't that make her feel just that more alone?

"I understand," he said, after a long moment, his words weighted, careful.

She shook her head, almost laughing. "You don't."

"Yes," he said, softly, and then, waited, until looked up at him, until their eyes met. "I do. My family – except for my grandmother - they're all dead too."

There was no hesitation in the way he said the words, and she knew that he had said them too many times to count. She gave an odd, involuntary sound, within her throat, trying not to cry, but failing, like so many times – these past few days, she had been little more than a spring of floppy tears. Yet she felt an odd comfort in his horrible truth, imparted to her. In that moment, she forgot that he was stranger, forgot that she didn't know where she was, forgot that she didn't know anything about him, except the only thing that mattered.

She fell into his arms, in what was only a hug, not a caress or a kiss or anything romantic, but perhaps that most comforting hug that she'd had in a long time.

* * *

><p>He didn't know how long they stayed like that, her long, slender arms around him, her head on his chest, not feeling awkward or uncomfortable but strangely happy, even though he'd always hated talking about his family, especially with strangers.<p>

His gray shirt grew wet with the tears, but he hardly minded, because he was crying too, big, fat tears, though he was twenty-three years old and hadn't cried for his parents in a long time. He hardly noticed, at first, until they started to drip onto her dark head.

After a time – he never knew whether it was hours or moments or seconds or days – her sobs softened into small hiccups and her breathing eased, and he realized that she had fallen asleep again at last, like a child, in his arms.

Gently, he let her down, only stopping for a moment to admire her profile… and then turning away, sickened with himself, wondering how he could find someone so wretched so beautiful. Then the thought struck him, that this girl, who he had found on the street, formed from thin air, was more real and more human to him than Victoire, who he had grown up with.

Sparing one more glance at the sleeping figure in his bed, trying and failing to immortalize it all in his memory, the shot blurring as his eyes watered again, he walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. He curled up in one of his squashy armchairs, not realizing until that moment that he had given up the only bed in the house for her.

An hour later, Teddy was still wedged, rather uncomfortably, in the chair, half-asleep, when suddenly, he sat bolt upright, remembering at last where he had heard the word she had spoken a few hours earlier, in the cab.

"Narnia…"

The word had reverberated in his mind, nearly since the moment she'd said it. He had heard it before; he was certain of it. He had desperately wanted to go and ask her about it, but was unwilling, unable to disturb her, to upset her even more than she already was. He wanted so badly to know where she had come from, and how she had gotten there. It occurred to him, once, that it might all be an act, that she might be some homeless loon who would steal everything in his house. But even though he had hidden his valuables along with a lot of his magic stuff she might notice when she woke up, he didn't really believe it. He had, after all, been trained as an Auror, and it had given him a sense of when exactly, to trust people. Of course, he was no Mad-Eye Moody and his partner at the office, Schroeder, often goaded him for being _too_ trusting. But his faith in her somehow stretched beyond that, into the realm of his head where Narnia was familiar…

It was only now that he remembered.

The Chronicles of Narnia… it had been in a book Rose had been reading, once, when they were both over at Uncle Harry's. He remembered in particular because Aunt Hermione had been trying to get her to read Hogwarts: A History instead, and Rose had adamantly refused.

He looked at the clock, which read one in the morning… For a moment, he weighed the pros and cons of Flooing Hogwarts at this hour. On the latter was that he would look like rather crazy – never a good impression to give off in front of any of the Weasleys, for it would buy you a one-way ticket to being teased mercilessly at the next party. Also, she probably wasn't still up, and really, it probably had nothing to do with anything, the word, Narnia… but it was the single really meaningful thing she had imparted to him, the only path towards any sort of understanding of her. It was important, somehow, in the same way that she was.

So he went down on his knees, like he had once imagined doing for Victoire, grabbed a handful of powder from the container he'd hidden from the couch, and stuck his head in the flames.

* * *

><p>When she woke up this time, there was only a numb, dull feeling a truth that she already knew, beginning to set in… She wanted to sink back into the covers and cry, but instead, she sat up, swinging her feet out and jumping onto the slightly messy wooden floor. She tried to find something else to concentrate on, and her eyes fell on a picture on the nightstand, one she hadn't noticed before. It was of a young woman, with bright bubblegum pink hair and the same smile as the man – for the first time, she realized she didn't even know his name – who had comforted her last night. Next to her stood a weary, ragged-looking man, yet his lined face was so the picture of happiness that she couldn't help but envy him. In his arms was the baby – it was had to be him, she supposed, and these, of course, must be his parents…<p>

She wondered how old he had been when they had died, if he had had any siblings… and then she winced, her thoughts swimming with the laughing faces of her own brothers, the round, freckled face of her sister – the face of a dreamer – shrinking back into the corner, hurt…

Lucy had never understood how she could have given up Narnia…

But even when Susan had been a child – free from the pain, the weight, of loss – she had never wanted to tell her parents, her friends from school, was not willing to do or say anything that might ever make them laugh at her… Besides, there was always a nagging feeling in the back of her mind, the kind of feeling that had made her tell Lucy to go back to sleep, in the days of Prince Caspian, even when she'd seen the golden blur of Aslan. It was a feeling she reckoned Lucy had never had to struggle with, the slight question, always there, somehow, that Narnia couldn't exactly be real… Not in the way that their own world was.

Trying to forget it all, Susan looked at the other photo. This one was not of Teddy or his parents at all, but of a girl, a little younger, probably, than she was, with long, straight, white-blonde hair, shining blue eyes, a perfect smile.

At once, the wrongness and unseemliness of having spent the night in a stranger's house, in a stranger's bed, swept her up, and she let it, perfectly willing to think of anything but her grief, and her guilt.

He had a girlfriend – but of course, nothing had happened, nothing at all. She had been very upset, and surely, in any case, this man was a very trustworthy sort, and only a very jealous woman would get upset over it.

But she couldn't helped but feel dirtied, somehow, a feeling only intensified as she became increasingly aware of the awful taste in her mouth and the fact that she was still in the same dress she had been in last night. She thought, fleetingly, of her reputation – always of the nice girl, the good girl, the sensible girl, not a dreamer, like Lucy…

And then she was disgusted with herself – as though it mattered what the state of her reputation was, anymore, when her heart was in such tatters, when her conscience ached so much.

Susan had always cared about the wrong things.

Moving away from it all, she walked slowly over to the door, and opened it, walking out into a still, strangely quiet apartment. Again, she wondered at the strange machines, the sleekness of it all, and it occured to her for the first time that perhaps this wasn't her London at all, but another place entirely, another reality, an alternative London...

"Hello…?"

The couch was rather more indented than it had been last night, and pillows and a blanket were scrunched haphazardly on the floor next to it, but there was no sign of him. Susan crept around the flat anyway, unwilling, for some unconscious reason, to cause any disturbance, and she was so intent on this that it took her several minutes to discover the note he'd left on the coffee table – mostly covered with soda cans and other junk.

"Called urgently to work," he'd written, in a rather untidy scrawl that she thought suited him, somehow. "Be back soon."

She slumped onto the couch he had – so recently, in all likelihood, vacated, to wait. It was only a few seconds before she started to sniffle again, started to wonder why she hadn't listened, why she had let them go…

She was so caught up in these thoughts, in fact, that it was twenty minutes before she noticed the huge volume underneath the table where he'd laid the letter, tossed in the pile with all the other piles, probably haphazardly, uncaringly…

The Chronicles of Narnia.

At first, she was only surprised by it, but reassured. Perhaps he had visited that world too, perhaps he would understand, more completely than he already seemed too… Perhaps – she hardly allowed herself to hope – he would know how to get there.

And then she opened the book, beginning to flip through the pages, thinking perhaps it contained pictures, or the old stories the animals used to tell, and finding her own name instead.

* * *

><p>When he got back, his eyes were drooping from supreme exhaustion. He hadn't slept a wink last night, instead reading, or at least scanning, nearly the whole of the huge collection of books that Rose had given to him last night, after he'd gotten Lily, who he'd found awake and eager as ever in the common room, to go and get her.<p>

His head still swam with trying to figure it out, more confused than ever about who she was, and he was all-too glad that they had finally sent him and Schroeder home – it was terrible luck they'd been called again in the first place. He felt a terrible sort of anxiety to get home to her, as if he was afraid that her slender figure might have disappeared in the night as suddenly as she had once appeared to him.

But where had she come _from_?

* * *

><p>The door opened, slowly. Abruptly, she dried her tears, shutting the book but folding down the corner of the page she was on, terrified she would lose the page otherwise.<p>

He crept into the room, and seemed surprised when he saw her sitting there.

"Oh," he smiled weakly. She wondered, briefly, what he saw, when he looked at her.

She wondered who he was.

But the question she wasn't about either of those things. Instead, raising herself to her full height and wishing she still looked like a queen – but had she ever looked like a queen, really? – she said, "What is this?"

The words were measured, cool, calculated. She would not say anything that was not necessary.

"A…" he seemed transfixed by her, almost a little frightened; she would not meet his eyes. "A book my cousin gave me, last night."

"What is it?" she said again, an edge – bitterness, perhaps, or desperation – creeping into her voice. She felt like a phantom, in his life, like a ghost or a hag or a memory. Something blurred around the edges, something indistinct, imaginary.

"I don't know," he said, and terror really was lighting in his eyes now.

She opened her mouth again, to speak, but he beat her to it. "You're… Susan, aren't you? Susan Pevensie?"

She nodded, mutely.

"Where… How did you get here?"

"I don't know," she said, not so coolly, now, and she could feel the anger – the same terrible rage she had felt only yesterday – slipping into her tone. "You seem to know everything about me already, don't you? Tell me where they are then. Tell me where they are, and how I can get to them."

"I… what?"

It was the match that lit the fuse, drawn slowly against the side of the box, all in his feeble mumble that he thought qualified as an answer.

"It's in here, isn't it?" she screamed, an enormous contrast from her mild, bitter words. "In this bloody book you've got here. You know all the hell about me, don't you? You already knew what happened… you've been playing me. Playing me, playing me…" she repeated the words, forming a horrible rhythm. He winced. "Just tell me where there are. Just tell me. I don't care anymore, if I have to give up my life or my soul… I don't care if I go to hell, because that's where I am already, isn't it? You devil, you devil… are they really in New Narnia?"

"Susan…" he said, and it only incensed her more, that he knew her name but she did not know his.

"Fiend!" she shouted. "Tell me where my sister is… my little sister… Lucy, the little girl, the daydreamer… Lucy, Lucy, Lucy… is she in Heaven, now? Is she happy? Just tell me… just tell me they're happy… please, please…tell me..."

"Susan, I only read that book last night…"

"It's not a book," she yelled, her hands over her ears now, sinking down into a kneeling position on the floor. "It's my life! And it knows everything – _everything._" Her voice broke. "Everything that's ever happened to me, except this, except now… How does it know all that? How can you know all that? How can someone I've never met know that?"

She silently mouthed the name, _Clive Staples Lewis,_ as though she couldn't even bear to say it, before going on, "… how could anyone ever know that, unless they caused that? Unless they put me here, unless they stuck me in this hell, to watch me struggle…"

He reached out for her, but she drew away.

"Don't touch me!" she said. "Are you him? Are you Lewis?"

He shook his head, eyes widened, "No, listen…"

"Just tell me!" she said. "Just tell me if it's true. Tell me what's going to happen to me, now, after these pages… tell me if they're in heaven… tell me if you made me like this… tell me…"

There was a long silence, where she looked for the words and couldn't find them, and they when she did, they were all wrong anyway.

"Tell me how you know all this, how you control it... tell me if you're a devil... an angel... tell me... if you're _God_."

A silence.

"No," he said, at long last finding his voice. "I'm just a man, just a boy… just a person, with a messy kitchen and no parents and a girl who will never love me as much as I love her. I'm just a man named Teddy, and I don't know…"

He started to cry, and she knew if it was true, had always known it was true… if she knew nothing else, she knew that. And so she collapsed on the couch to sob along with him and wish that her tears could wash her away.

"I knew you weren't…" she said. "But I wished… I wished you were… I wish there was…"

"Just because you can't see him," Teddy said softly. "Or him or her or it or whoever… whatever… it is… doesn't mean he's not real, somewhere…"

"Do you believe?" she asked.

* * *

><p>He found, somehow, in the murky expanse all around him, an answer, the only truth that he could give her.<p>

"My grandmother used to take me to church, sometimes," he said. "I don't go much, usually, anymore, but she still does. I've never known… never known what to think. Maybe there really is someone out this, someone who knows everything and watches over us and gives us a place to go after we die… but then, why did he take my parents away? I used to wonder that all the time… but then maybe God or whatever didn't do that. Maybe it was their own free choice and maybe… maybe we're supposed to figure it out for ourselves. Maybe that's the point." He gulped; there was a lump in his throat. "I'm not going to pretend like I know… if there's a God, if there's a Heaven…"

She considered this, looking at the book in her hands, at the last page, at the blur of black ink and then – an empty white page.

"I just want to know," she cried, tears cascading down her face, and he knew that he was crying too. "Teddy…" she said his name for the first time. "Teddy… I wish I knew if they were really there. I wish I knew that I'd be there too, someday…"

"So do I," he said, "but we can't, but we don't, and that's… that's it…"

"How?" But she did not wait for a response; for she knew he could not answer. "I wish I knew if it was real, Teddy… if this, if Narnia, if Aslan… Aslan… I want to know if it's real, if _I'm_ real."

"You remind me of someone," he told her and he pointed to a picture on the wall, of the same girl she'd seen that morning in his bedroom. "Her name's… Victoire… and she doesn't really believe in anything except stuff she can see, stuff she can hold – beauty and money and position. And I love her, anyway, even though I shouldn't anymore, not for any of those reasons, but because of who she used to be. And that person doesn't exist anymore, but she's still real, because I still believe in her… And that's what I think the most real things are – something you believe in, something you can only feel, can only trust in, but no see, and maybe you're being completely shitfaced, and someday you'll fall, looking for your reality, and they'll be nothing to catch you… Maybe I'm completely wrong, is I guess all I'm saying, but I don't really think that matters, because I've never really regret loving Victoire, like I'll never regret loving you."

And he kissed her, softly, sweetly, trying to put in all, to put everything he'd felt, in this past day that was both eternity and instantaneous, in one single moment, in one single embrace.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and for a long time, neither of them said anything at all, but just sat there in silence, together.

* * *

><p>She could have sat like that forever, but then, from somewhere far away, she heard the sound of a horn – her horn – and knew, somehow, that her time here was up.<p>

"I have to go," she said, and she saw sorrow in his eyes, but no surprise. "Tell… tell Victoire what you told me, someday… For me. Promise you will. I don't want... she'll end up like me, otherwise. Like I was... Don't... Promise."

"Promise," he said solemnly. "And just promise me that – whatever happens, you won't forget, this time. You won't…"

He trailed off, unable to finish, but she knew that answer anyway. "You were real, Teddy. I'll never forget that."

And then there was swirling, impenetrable darkness, all around her, filling her, and then, suddenly, there was she was again, laying on her bed in her messy room, like she had never even left it, like nothing had changed.

(Like it had all been a dream.)

But it hadn't been – he had made her promise, and this time, she would not forget it.

And something had changed, anyway, because even though there were still tears on her face, though her heart was still broken for her mum and dad, her brothers and sister, she could find the strength to bend down now, to start to pick up her room (her life), to put it back together.

* * *

><p>She vanished, into thin air, like nothing more than smoke, like she'd never been there at all.<p>

He sat back down on the couch, picking up the book she had dropped upon the floor and opening it, beginning to read it through again. For the rest of his life, he would flip through the pages, sometimes alone, in his bedroom, sometimes next to Victoire, on the couch, sometimes out on the porch, an old man, with his and Victoire's grandchildren running all around them…

(He'd always have her to thank for that.)

For the rest of his life, he'd wonder, wonder, if it was even possible that he had once met her, kissed her, that she was real…

Somehow, he could never doubt it.


End file.
